Performance investigation on harmonic distortion and inter-modulation distortion induced degradation for a single- and two-tone IM-DD SCM optical link

Subcarrier multiplexing (SCM) has been utilized for data transmission in high performance broadband in access networks which requires high transport capacity and throughput with guaranteed quality of service. In a transmitter employing SCM technique in an Intensity Modulation Direct Detection (IM-DD) system, laser source nonlinearity is an important issue of concern. This work investigates the sensitivity of resulting harmonic distortion (HD) and inter-modulation distortion (IMD) to changes in subcarrier amplitude, laser bias current operational parameters and laser quantum efficiency, laser active layer volume and laser carrier life time design parameters. Results show that IMD impairment mechanism is more dominant than HD mechanism. The spectrum analyser shows distinct difference in the frequency domain display of HD and IMD dominated systems. HD and IMD mechanisms show high sensitivity to carrier amplitude and active layer volume with a positively increasing slope gradient and high sensitivity to bias current and carrier life time with negatively decreasing slope gradients. Also these impairments are moderately sensitive to laser quantum efficiency. The investigations will help in identification of the most influencing operational and design parameters and their suitable values to be used to effectively reduce the influence of the source nonlinearity of SCM links.